petrarch's letters of recommendation

Petrarch’s letters of recommendation

Kenneth Austin

Letters of recommendation were a staple of the Renaissance, and indeed ofthe early modern period as a whole: they were used, for instance, in thespheres of cultural and political patronage, international diplomacy, andwithin confessional groups during the Reformation. But while historians havedemonstrated a growing interest in the role such letters could play, especiallywithin patronage networks, only limited attention has been given to thecharacter of the letters themselves; there has been even less concern with thehumanist models on which their writers might draw.1 This is in markedcontrast to the ancient period, where letters of recommendation, both realand literary, have been the subject of several studies.2 My aim is to fill thislacuna by framing a discussion around the letters of recommendation writtenby Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), the figure who exerted the greatest influ-ence on Renaissance letter-writing as a whole.3 It draws particular attention tothe dynamics between the letter writer, the recipient, and the person recom-mended, as reflected in the letters; it also examines the rhetorical strategiesthat were deployed. As we will see, friendship played a critical role in shapingthe context, and determining the content, of these exchanges.4 Moreover, I

1 Letters of recommendation within Renaissance patronage relationships are discussed for instance in DaleKent, The Rise of the Medici. Faction in Florence 1426–1434 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. 83–104;Paul D. McLean, The Art of the Network. Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham andLondon: Duke University Press, 2007), esp. 150–69; and Vincent Ilardi, ‘Crosses and Carets: RenaissancePatronage and Coded Letters of Recommendation’, American Historical Review 92 (1987), 1127–49. A rareexample of subjecting a humanist’s letters of recommendation to scrutiny is provided by Mark Morford,‘Lipsius’ Letters of Recommendation’ in Toon van Houdt et al. (eds.), Self-Presentation and Social Identification.The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002),183–98. Also relevant is Elizabeth May McCahill, ‘Finding a Job as a Humanist: The Epistolary Collection ofLapo da Castiglionchio the Younger’, Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 1308–45, though this deals with Lapo’sletters as a whole rather than his letters of recommendation specifically; in any case, as a relatively minor figure,it is to be doubted that his letters were especially influential.

2 Especially Chan-Hie Kim, Form and Structure of the Familiar Greek Letter of Recommendation. (Montana: Uni-versity of Montana, 1972); Hannah M. Cotton, ‘Mirificum Genus Commendationis: Cicero and the Latin Letter ofRecommendation’, American Journal of Philology 106 (1985), 328–34; eadem, ‘The Role of Cicero’s Letters ofRecommendation: Iustitia versus Gratia’, Hermes 114 (1986), 443–60.

3 On Petrarch, see for instance Ernest H. Wilkins, Life of Petrarch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961);Craig Kallendorf, ‘The Historical Petrarch’, American Historical Review 101 (1996), 130–41.

4 The literature on friendship in the medieval and early modern periods is vast. Among the most useful worksare Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: the Monastic Experience, 350–1250 (Kalamazoo: CistercianStudies, 1998); Reginald Hyatte, The Arts of Friendship. The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early

Renaissance Studies Vol. •• No. •• DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2012.00815.x

© 2012 The AuthorRenaissance Studies © 2012 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

will consider the extent to which the letters’ placement within Petrarch’spublished letter collections affected how they were read; and this, in turn, willshed light on the relationship between letter collections and letter-writingmanuals.5

Petrarch has long been acknowledged as a crucial figure in the Renaissanceadoption of the letter as a literary form.6 Famously, after discovering a copy ofCicero’s Letters to Atticus in the cathedral library of Verona in 1345, he setabout arranging his own letters. Over the following two decades he gatheredtogether twenty-four books of Letters on Familiar Matters and a further eighteenbooks of Letters of Old Age.7 After their publication, they would exert a con-siderable influence on many of the most celebrated letter writers of theRenaissance including Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Marsilio Ficino,Desiderius Erasmus and Pietro Bembo. As a series of scholars has demon-strated, however, the process of organizing these letters for publicationinvolved rewriting certain ones, changing their order, and even creating newletters.8 In other words, while these letters provide us with many details aboutPetrarch’s career (and have often been plundered by his biographers accord-ingly), it is important to bear in mind that they were ‘constructed’ texts.

The letter of recommendation is one of the best-known genres within theepistolary canon. It held a prominent position in the two surviving ancienttreatises on the art of letter-writing: Pseudo-Demetrius identified the ‘com-mendatory’ letter as the second of twenty-one different types of letter, whilePseudo-Libanius treated the ‘commending’ style of letter as the fourth of

Renaissance Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Ullrich Langer, Perfect Friendship. Studies in Literature and MoralPhilosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille (Geneva: Droz, 1994); Julian Haseldine (ed.), Friendship in Medieval Europe(Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999).

5 On Renaissance letter writing see Cecil H. Clough, ‘The Cult of Antiquity: Letters and Letter Collections’in Clough (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1976), 33–67; Claudio Guillén, ‘Notes towards the Study of the Renaissance Letter’in Barbara K. Lewalski (ed.), Renaissance Genres. Essays on Theory, History and Interpretation (Cambridge, MA andLondon: Harvard University Press, 1986), 70–101; John M. Najemy, Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desirein the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 18–57; Toon vanHoudt et al. (eds.), Self-Presentation and Social Identification. The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in EarlyModern Times (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002).

6 E.g. John E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1903–8), 2:7–8; cf. Ronald Witt, ‘Medieval “Ars Dictaminis” and the Beginnings of Humanism: a New Construc-tion of the Problem’, Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982), 1–35. For a recent illuminating discussion, see Carol E.Quillen, Rereading the Renaissance. Petrarch, Augustine and the Language of Humanism (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1998), esp. Chap. 3: ‘Petrarch’s Correspondence and Humanist Practice’.

7 Francesco Petrarca, Le Familiari, ed. Vittorio Rossi and Umberto Bosco, 4 vols. (Florence: G. C. SansoniEditore, 1933–42). In the footnotes below, references are to this edition. English translations are taken fromAldo S. Bernardo (trans.), Letters on Familiar Matters. Rerum familiarum libri, 3 vols. (Vol. 1, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1975; Vols 2 and 3, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982–85) andLetters of Old Age, Rerum senilium libri I–XVIII trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin and Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols.(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). On Petrarch’s letters, see Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarcaletterato, Vol. 1, Lo scrittoio del Petrarca (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1947), 1–55; Ernest Hatch Williams,Petrarch’s Correspondence (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1960).

8 See especially Aldo S. Bernardo, ‘Letter-Splitting in Petrarch’s Familiares’, Speculum 33 (1958), 236–41; idem,‘The Selection of Letters in Petrarch’s Familiares’, Speculum 35 (1960), 280–88.

2 Kenneth Austin

forty-one.9 Various examples are found in the Bible, and they form a signifi-cant proportion of the surviving Greek papyrus letters.10 Book 13 of Cicero’sEpistolae ad Familiares consists entirely of letters of recommendation; in fact, ithas been suggested for that reason that this book may have been conceived ofas a separate manual.11 In the most famous Renaissance letter-writing manual,Erasmus’ De conscribendis epistolis (1522), the Dutch humanist divides lettersinto three classes: persuasive, encomiastic and judicial. Letters of recommen-dation he includes under the first of these, alongside letters of conciliation,encouragement, persuasion, consolation, petition, admonition and others.12

He later devotes substantial space to discussing this genre, and includesreferences to more than forty classical letters which might be consulted asexemplars by his readers.13

The letter of recommendation is particularly useful as a genre for theinvestigation of Petrarch’s epistolary practice for several reasons. In the firstplace, it constitutes a relatively small and manageable element within hispublished correspondence. Of the almost 480 letters contained in his twocollections of letters, thirteen are specifically identified by their titles as lettersof recommendation (there are, in addition, a number of other letters whichhave elements that might allow them to be considered as belonging to thiscategory, but for the purposes of this article, I will focus only on those lettersspecifically identified as such). This group of letters is large enough to illus-trate a fair degree of variety on Petrarch’s part as a letter writer, yet smallenough to allow for close textual analysis.

In addition, the letter of recommendation occupies an unusual position asa genre. Because such letters were written for a specific purpose – requestinga favour from the recipient of the letter on behalf of its bearer – they havetraditionally been quite formulaic. In his analysis of Greek papyrus letters ofrecommendation, Chan-Hie Kim established the normative structure of suchletters. This consisted of: an ‘opening’ (including a salutation formula); the‘background’ (which identifies the person being recommended and provides

9 Pseudo-Demetrius, Epistolary Types, in Abraham J. Malherbe (ed.), Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta,Georgia: Scholar Press, 1988), 30–33; Pseudo-Libanius, Epistolary Styles, in Malherbe (ed.), Ancient EpistolaryTheorists, 66–75.

10 Kim’s Form and Structure is based on an analysis of eighty-three papyrus letters of recommendation. See alsoAnneMarie Luijenijk, Greetings in the Lord. Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2008), 102–11.

11 This suggestion, originally made by L. Gurlitt in a dissertation of 1879, is discussed by Cotton, ‘MirificumGenus Commendationis’, 328. See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistolae ad Familiares, ed. D. R. Shackleton-Bailey, 2 vols.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

12 Desiderius Erasmus, De conscribendis epistolis, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin, in Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi I, II(Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1971), 311. For an English translation, see ‘On the Writingof Letters/ De conscribendis epistolis’ translated and annotated by Charles Fantazzi, in J. K. Sowards (ed.), CollectedWorks of Erasmus, Vol. 25: Literary and Educational Writings 3 (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University ofToronto Press, 1985) 71. On this text, see, for instance, Judith Rice Henderson, ‘Erasmus on the Art ofLetter-Writing’ in James J. Murphy (ed.), Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice of RenaissanceRhetoric (1983), 331–55.

13 Erasmus, ‘On the Writing of Letters’, 181–9.

Petrarch’s letters of recommendation 3

something of a context); the ‘request period’ (in which the thing beingrequested is set out); ‘the appreciation’ (less common, but pre-emptivelyconveying gratitude to the letter’s recipient); and a ‘closing’ (which includesa final salutation).14 Moreover, as Kim and others have shown, such letterscommonly relied on stock phrases and formulas.15 Little had changed, at leastas regards the typical letter of recommendation, by the fifteenth century.16

This approach was, however, in stark contrast to that associated with the‘familiar’ type of letter for which Petrarch is renowned.17 In the letter ofdedication, addressed to his friend ‘Socrates’ (Ludwig van Kempen), whichopens his Letters on Familiar Matters, Petrarch offers a rather self-deprecatingcharacterization of the collection which follows: ‘In it you will find very fewletters that can be called masterpieces, and many others written on a variety ofpersonal matters in a rather simple and unstudied manner, though some-times, when the subject matter so requires, seasoned with interspersed moralconsiderations, an approach observed by Cicero himself.’18

The two types of letter did not necessarily fit easily together. As has alreadybeen noted, Cicero’s letters of recommendation had been gathered togetherinto one book of his Epistolae ad Familiares (a collection to which Petrarch didnot have access), suggesting perhaps that it was felt that they constituted adistinct group. In a similar vein, the authors of Renaissance letter-writingmanuals tended to distinguish the two. As noted above, Erasmus argued thatletters could be divided into three main classes; however, he then conceded:‘To these three it will be possible to add a fourth class which, if you please, weshall call the familiar.’19 Yet, whereas the theorists separated letters of recom-mendation from the familiar letter, Petrarch, in his published collections, did

14 Kim, Form and Structure passim, but see esp. p.7 where this structure is first set out.15 Clinton W. Keyes, ‘The Greek Letter of Introduction’, American Journal of Philology 56 (1935), 28–44.16 McLean, Art of the Network, writes ‘the letter of recommendation . . . was typically terse and formulaic. No

better type of letter could be found than this on the basis of which to assert that Florentine patronageinteraction was a thoroughly patterned corpus of discourse’ (150).

17 As is frequently noted, the ‘familiar’ letter stood in marked contrast to the more formal ‘ars dictaminis’ ofthe Middle Ages. On medieval letter writing, see for instance Jean Leclerq, ‘Le Genre Epistolaire au MoyenAge’, Revue des Moyen Age Latin 2 (1946), 63–70. On the ‘Ars Dictaminis’ see William D. Patt, ‘The Early “ArsDictaminis” as Response to a Changing Society’, Viator 9 (1978), 133–55; Ronald Witt, ‘Medieval “Ars Dictami-nis” and the Beginnings of Humanism: A Construction of the Problem’, Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982), 1–35;James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, 1981), Chap. 5. More recently, see the special edition ofRhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 19, 2 (2001), which was dedicated to ‘the waning of Medieval ArsDictaminis’.

18 Petrarch Fam I, 1 (Sec 35, ll.243–7): ‘In quo pauca scilicet admodum exquisite, multa familiariter dequerebus familiaribus scripta erant; etsi interdum, exigente materia, simplex et inelaborata narratio quibusdaminteriectis moralibus condiatur; quod et ab ipso Cicerone servatum est.’

19 Erasmus, De conscribendis epistolis, 311, l.8: ‘Hic tribus quartum genus accersere licebit, quod si placet,familiare nominemus’; Erasmus, ‘On the Writing of Letters’, 71. Erasmus elaborates: ‘Eius eiusmodi fermespecies esse possunt: Narratoria, qua rem apud nos gestam, longe positis exponimus. Nunciatoria, qua nouarumrerum quippiam annuciamus, siue de publicis, siue priuatis, siue etiam domesticis. Gratulatoria, qua amicorumfelicitatem nobis iucundam esse testamur. Lamentatoria, qua vel nostra, vel necessariorum incommoda deplo-ramus. Mandatoria, qua negocii quippiam alii nostro nomine gerendum committimus.’ (lines 9–14). ‘It mayinclude the following types: narrative, when we describe for those at a distance an event that has taken place

4 Kenneth Austin

not. An examination of the tensions between these two forms, and Petrarch’sefforts to reconcile them, will allow us to gain a better understanding of thenature of his intentions as a letter writer.

The remainder of this article will look at how the relationships that Petrarchenjoyed with the recipients of his letters of recommendation, and the indi-viduals who were being recommended, are reflected in his letters. Then,attention will turn to the requests that Petrarch made, and the rhetoricalstrategies that he adopted in order to support them. In several cases, thesewere tied to the character of his relationships, or to the nature of the request;but more generally, these were also couched in the language of amicitia. In thethird section, the article will look more broadly at these letters as part ofPetrarch’s published correspondence, emphasizing how their place within thecollection influences the way in which they are read; this in turn will make itpossible to suggest how Petrarch envisaged his letter collections might beused.

***

In a recent article on letters of recommendation in the ancient world, RogerRees refers to what he calls ‘the amicitia triangle’.20 While in that context, Reesuses the expression with a fairly narrow meaning – specifically the emphasis onfriendship relationships within such letters – it might be applied more broadlyto represent the dynamics of a letter of recommendation. Person A recom-mends Person B to Person C; Person A already knows both Person B andPerson C, and if the recommendation is successful, the triangle is completed,with Person B and Person C being united by means of the letter (see Fig. 1).21

In this process, the relationship that the recommender enjoys with the twoother parties has an important role to play in shaping how the letter is written;this often helps determine the grounds on which the recommendation itselfis made. This is certainly the case when one looks at Petrarch’s letters ofrecommendation.

The thirteen letters of recommendation that Petrarch wrote were addressedto nine individuals. Three were addressed to Emperor Charles IV; two eachwere addressed to Guglielmo da Pastrengo, an orator, and to Jan ze Streda(Johann von Neumarkt), a Bohemian humanist, who served in the ImperialChancellery, before becoming Bishop of Naumburg, and later Bishop ofOlmütz. In addition, individual letters were sent to Rinaldo Cavalchini da

near us; informative, when we announce a piece of news, whether of a public, private or domestic nature;congratulatory, when we are pleased at our friends’ happiness; mournful, when we bewail either our owntroubles or those of our acquaintances; mandatory, when we entrust to another a piece of business to be carriedout on our behalf’.

20 Roger Rees, ‘Letters of Recommendation and the Rhetoric of Praise’ in Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison(eds.), Ancient Letters. Classical and Late Antique Epistolography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 149–68(at 156–9).

21 McLean, Art of the Network, 158 includes a series of similar visual portrayals of this process.


Villafranca, a poet; Bernardo Anguissola, the Governor of Como; FrancescoNelli, a pastor of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Florence; Ernest, theArchbishop of Prague; Francesco Bruni, a papal secretary; and Ugo diSanseverino, a military commander and member of the court of Naples. Asone might expect, the majority of these figures were of considerable status:after all, it was to men of power and influence that one commonly turned forassistance. However, there is a sufficient range of characters here to allow usto determine the extent to which social standing affected the tenor ofPetrarch’s letters.

At the same time, though, it was not simply the status of the recipient thataffected the character of their exchange. Equally important was the level offamiliarity between Petrarch and his correspondents. An indication of this canbe derived from considering the frequency with which they exchanged lettersmore generally. For instance, in the published collections there are fourteenletters to the emperor;22 in addition, there is one to his wife, the empressAnna, following the birth of her daughter.23 Nelli was the recipient of twenty-nine letters, making him one of Petrarch’s most frequent correspondents.24

Jan, the Bishop of Olmütz, received eight letters;25 Francesco Bruni eleven;26

Guglielmo da Pastrengo four.27 Anguissola, the Governor of Como, was therecipient of two letters,28 as was Ernest, the Archbishop of Prague.29 Only thepoet Rinaldo Cavalchini and Ugo di Sanseverino were not recipients of otherletters. Also notable is that with the exception of these last two figures, the

22 Fam 10.1, 12.1, 18.1, 19.1, 19.4, 19.12, 21.7, 23.2, 23.3, 23.8, 23.9, 23.15, 23.21; Sen 16.5. [NB: The lettersof recommendation are indicated in bold within these letter sequences]

23 Fam 21.8.24 Fam 12.4, 12.5, 12.9, 12.12, 12.13, 13.5, 13.6, 13.8, 15.2, 16.11, 16.12, 16.13, 16.14, 18.7, 18.8, 18.9, 18.10,

18.11, 19.6, 19.7, 19.13, 19.14, 19.15, 20.6, 20.7, 21.12, 21.13, 21.14, 22.10.25 Fam 10.6, 21.2, 21.5, 23.6, 23.7, 23.10, 23.14, 23.16.26 Sen 1.6, 1.7, 2.2, 2.3, 6.3, 9.2, 11.2, 11.3, 11.8, 13.13, 13.14.27 Fam 9.15, 9.16, 13.3, 22.11.28 Fam 17.6, 17.7.29 Fam 21.1, 21.6.

A (Recommender)

Existing Relationship Existing Relationship

(Recommended) B C (Recipient of letter)

United by Letter of Recommendation

Fig. 1 The Recommendation Triangle

6 Kenneth Austin

letter of recommendation was not the first letter to be sent to an individual;this is a point to which I will return in the final section.

The group most fully represented within Petrarch’s letters of recommen-dation was that associated with the imperial court in Prague.30 Petrarch hadwritten a couple of open letters to the emperor, urging him to turn hisattention to Italy,31 before he visited Prague in 1356.32 Thereafter the emperorattempted to persuade Petrarch to move there permanently. While he did nottake up this option, he remained in regular contact, sending a sizeablenumber of letters to Charles, Jan his chancellor, and Ernest, the Archbishopof Prague. Unsurprisingly, these warm relations, and the desire of the Praguecourt to attract Petrarch were reflected in the letters of recommendation thathe sent to them.

To the emperor, he was, without question, highly deferential.33 As was hisregular practice, he addresses Charles as ‘Caesar’ in all three of his letters ofrecommendation, but in the first he also employs the expressions ‘O greatestCaesar’, ‘O most learned of princes’, and ‘O most invincible Caesar’. Thisreverence also characterizes the way that Petrarch presents his requests. In thefirst, for instance, he opens by stating: ‘See how much hope and courage yourkindness affords, O Caesar; so much indeed that I dare recommend to yourclemency not only myself . . . but also other people.’34 In the second, heapologizes for the boldness of his request, asking rhetorically, ‘how would Idare, except out of great love, to speak this freely to Caesar?’35 Petrarch’sdeference is clearly conveyed by his characterisation of himself as ‘daring’ tomake these requests of the emperor.

In the third letter, however, he adopts a different tone. It is a sequel to thesecond and was written because the emperor had not acted on Petrarch’soriginal request. Petrarch begins this letter somewhat abruptly: ‘I determinedto remain silent, but writing to you compelled me to speak as much out ofrespect for you as out of love for the person for whom I write.’36 After brieflyrestating his recommendation, he returns to a more humble tone, perhapsfearing that he has spoken inappropriately: ‘I beseech you to forgive myfrankness and self-assurance, since without considerable self-assurance so

30 On this group, see Frank L. Borchardt, ‘Petrarch: the German Connection’ in Aldo Scaglione (ed.), FrancisPetrarch Six Centuries Later: A Symposium (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 418–31.

31 Fam 10.1 and 12.1.32 Wilkins, Life of Petrarch, 152–3.33 The status of the emperor is also implied by the placement of the earliest letters addressed to him within

Petrarch’s correspondence: they open books 10, 12, 18 and 19 of the Familiar Letters.34 Fam 19.4 (Sec.1, ll.2–5): ‘Vide quantum michi spei quantum ve animi prestat humanitas tua, Cesar, ut non

me tantum . . . sed alios quoque clementie tue commendare ausim.’35 Fam 21.7 (Sec.1, ll.9–11): ‘quando ego, nisi vehementer amarem, romano imperatori auderem ita dicere?’36 Fam 23.3 (Sec.1, ll.2–3): ‘Tacitus transire decreveram, sed cogit ut loquar non minus tui reverentia quam

eius amor pro quo loquor.’


much frankness would never suggest itself.’37 This letter reveals a tensionwhich was ordinarily concealed: the high status of the emperor, and the factthat Petrarch was making a request, required a deferential tone to be used; butthe cordial relations which existed between them, and Petrarch’s disappoint-ment, pushed him into transgressing these expectations, albeit in exceptionalcircumstances, and even then only briefly.

There may have been similar tensions in the background, but to a lesserextent, connected with Petrarch’s interactions with his other correspondents;since, however, there is no indication that they did not acquiesce to hisrequests, and since there was less of a difference in status, these tensions arenot as apparent. Instead, the impression that one gains by looking at theletters that Petrarch sent to most of the other figures is that he enjoyed warmrelationships with them. This naturally spills over into the letters of recom-mendation themselves. This is clear, for instance, in his interactions with Jan,Bishop of Olmütz. In one of the letters of recommendation, Petrarch alludesto receiving a gift from Jan, which he insists is unnecessary, but which heaccepts ‘gratefully and happily’.38 In another, Petrarch mentions that he issending a copy of his Bucolicum Carmen, which, he claims, no one else has seenin its entirety.39 The exchange of gifts and the privileged access to his writingswere both markers of warm relations between the pair.

While the recipients of Petrarch’s letters of recommendation can all beeasily identified, the picture is rather different when one turns to the peopleon whose behalf he wrote. In the majority of cases, the individual for whomthe letter has been written is not named, though it is frequently possible toidentify who is meant. Two letters are written on behalf of Petrarch’s son,Giovanni; he is not actually named, though there is an allusion to their bloodrelationship.40 A second pair of letters were written in relation to a ‘youngstudent’; this was Giovanni Malpaghini, who had worked with Petrarch forseveral years as a copyist, during which time he had helped him transcribe andorder his letters and the Canzoniere; in both letters, Petrarch begins by insistingthat this individual was like a son to him.41 A further letter was written for oneof his closest friends, ‘Lelius’ (Lello di Pietro Stefano dei Tosetti), whom hehad known since a trip to Rome in 1330.42 There are four letters recommend-ing Sagremor de Pommiers, a French nobleman who worked as a courierconveying letters between Petrarch and the imperial court; he is only men-tioned in the earliest of these, but the first three form an interlinked group,

37 Fam 23.3 (Sec.2, ll.14–15): ‘Da, obsecro, libertati fideique mee veniam; nunquam, nisi fides multa esset,tanta suppeteret libertas.’

38 Fam 21.5 (Sec.6, l.36): ‘non grato tantum animo sed iocundo.’39 Fam 23.6.40 Fam 13.2, 13.3: ‘quam michi sit iunctus sanguine’ (13.2, Sec.1, l.3).41 Sen 11.8, 11.9.42 Fam 19.4.

8 Kenneth Austin

and the fourth refers back to one of these, although only obliquely.43 Thereare a further three letters where it is not possible to identify who is beingrecommended.44

It is perhaps not so surprising that the people for whom the recommenda-tions were being made prove harder to identify; this was at least partly anatural consequence of the practical circumstances in which the letters werewritten. In several instances, the person recommended was already known tothe recipient of the letter, so fuller identification was unnecessary; in addition,the fact that the individual in question would be arriving bearing the letterwould make it even more superfluous. At the same time, this was clearly aconscious decision on Petrarch’s part. As far as he was concerned, it wasapparently sufficient that these people should be identified either as a familymember (or, failing that, ‘like a son’) or a friend; this was enough to justifywriting on their behalf. But in terms of the dynamics of the recommendationtriangle, the relationship between the letter’s writer and its recipient was moreimportant. This was all the more significant when it came to expressing hisrequests.

***

When one turns to the nature of the requests that Petrarch made of therecipients of his letters of recommendation, one can discern both how hisrelationships with his correspondents helped to shape these letters, particu-larly in terms of the manner in which he expressed his requests, and also howhe often sought to subvert some of the expectations associated with the genre.

A good example of the former is the letter of recommendation thatPetrarch addressed to Francesco Nelli, on behalf of a friend going to Rome.Petrarch begins by describing this friend in terms likely to appeal to a man ofthe church: ‘This man whom you see is a humble little man devoted to Christ,a true despiser of the world and transitory things and zealous for eternalthings.’45 Later in the letter, he alludes to Nelli’s responsibilities as a Christian:‘For what could be more acceptable to Christ whom you serve, or to hisApostles who are your guests, than for you gladly to give assistance and adviceto this devout man who has left behind the court’s deafening roar to make hisway to their silent dwellings?’46 In a particularly evocative postscript, Petrarchfurther emphasizes the Christian context from which this request is beingmade: ‘This letter I have written in haste from a remote corner of Milan, from

43 Fam 21.5, 21.6, 21.7; 23.3. In 21.2 he was identified as the bearer. See Ernest H. Wilkins, ‘On the Carriageof Petrarch’s Letters’, Speculum 35 (1960), 214–23.

44 Fam 17.7, 19.6, 22.11, 23.7.45 Fam 19.6 (Sec. 1, ll.3–4): ‘Hic quem cernis homuncio Cristo devotus, mundi rerumque fugacium spretor

ingens et cupidissimus eternarum.’46 Fam 19.6 (Sec. 2, ll.11–14): ‘Nam quid Cristo cui servis, quid Apostolis eius, hospitibus tuis, acceptius potes,

quam si cristianissimum hunc virum cupide, dimissis frementis aule fragoribus, ad illorum quietissima liminagradientem iuveris atque direxeris?’


a secluded section in the convent of St Ambrose on the day and at the hourwhen a living light from earth shone upon a world immersed in shadows andupon blind mortals.’47 With this touch, he reinforces the piety of his friendwith his own; in so doing he makes it all but impossible for Nelli to reject therequest. Everything in the letter has been tailored to what he knows of hiscorrespondent’s priorities.

In other letters, Petrarch sought to justify his requests for support on behalfof the individual he was recommending with somewhat broader arguments.This was true, for instance, of the letter that he wrote to Anguissola, theGovernor of Como, on behalf of an unnamed German friend who was aboutto cross the Alps. Having alluded to Anguissola’s duties as a friend (to whichI will turn shortly), Petrarch sets out two further grounds on which thisindividual was deserving of his assistance. In a somewhat over-the-top passage,he explains that there are strong personal reasons for doing this:

he has an aged mother; he fervently wishes to arrive home before her last dayand thus fears too much delay. Among his other qualities we find this admirablefilial devotion, and by measuring his mother’s wishes by his own desire to see her,his becomes even more consuming. You too can easily imagine his mother’s stateof mind if you recall your own mother, and your compassion will match hisdevotion when you consider that he is the only child of an aged widow.48

As if this were not enough, Petrarch builds up the set of factors which urge thisindividual to return home: ‘even before coming to Italy, he was far from hismother, but now his innate patriotism and his friends’ expectation, but espe-cially his mother’s age and solitude, hasten him onward.’49 Finally, he urgesthe governor: ‘Return a son to his mother, return a citizen to his belovedcountry, lest we consider foreign hearts incapable of feeling the sweetness oftheir land, and are tempted to limit such feelings to Italians or Greeks.’50 Inthis way, the letter moves from asking Anguissola to support the student’s filialdevotion and laudable patriotism, to a request that he simply do what is right,in almost abstract terms.

When he felt it necessary, Petrarch was able to pen a traditional letter ofrecommendation. For example, in a letter on behalf of Lelius to the emperor,he writes of his friend:

47 Fam 19.6: (Sec.3, ll.18–22); ‘Hec tibi raptim scripsi in extremo angulo Mediolani, ambrosiane domus inparte remotissima, ea luce eaque lucis hora qua mundo tenebris presso cecisque mortalibus, de terra olim vivalux orta est.’

48 Fam 17.7 (Sec.2–3, ll.14–21): ‘matrem habet annosam, cuius fatalem prevenire diem ardet et nimiumdistulisse formidat. Est enim inter cetera pietate mirabili maternumque desiderium proprio metitur eoquesuum magis ac magis accenditur. Tu quoque matris eius animum perfacile metire, si et tibi tue genitricis imagosuccurrat et pietati pietas astipuletur, si cogitare ceperis anui vidue filium talem atque unicum abesse.’

49 Fam 17.7 (Sec.3, ll.24–26): ‘abfuerat etiam priusquam ad Italiam veniret, et nunc cum pietas insita tumamicorum expectatio et in primis matris etas ac solitudo solicitant.’

50 Fam 17.7 (Sec.4, ll.29–32): ‘Redde natum matri anxie, redde civem patrie exoptate, nisi forte barbaricosanimos non putamus natalis soli sentire dulcedinem et hunc affectum nonnisi italicum definimus aut grecum.’

10 Kenneth Austin

This man, O greatest Caesar, who comes to your feet with my letter is a Romancitizen and of noble blood, yet even more noble in virtue. It would require muchtime to sing his praises (for copious and abundant is the subject matter offeredme were I to speak of his prudence, fidelity, industry, eloquence, versatileforesight, and other virtues), but I have decided to entrust him completely to youand to your opinion, O most learned of princes.51

Here, one can identify a number of the classic elements of the genre. Charlesis addressed in deferential terms, while it is indicated that Lelius also acknowl-edges their difference in status: he comes to the emperor’s feet. Second,Lelius’ many virtues are set out, albeit in quite generic terms; later in theletter, Petrarch also records the high regard in which Lelius is held by otherimportant figures. Both were familiar means of establishing the worth of anindividual. Finally, Petrarch passes over responsibility to the emperor to makethe final judgement of Lelius.

Yet while in the letters discussed so far, Petrarch advances a range of factorswhich might be expected to persuade his correspondents to accede to hisrequests, in others he demonstrated himself ready to subvert the genre. Thisis especially true of the letter that he wrote to Rinaldo Cavalchini on behalf ofhis son. Having re-introduced his son to Cavalchini (who had taught Giovannisome years previously), rather than exaggerating the qualities of the manstanding before him, he offers a candid assessment: ‘I have never seen a youngman with greater hatred for letters. He neither hates nor fears anyone exceptthe book, his only enemy’.52 These are hardly the words to inspire confidenceor enthusiasm in a proposed teacher! But as Petrarch goes on to explain, ‘I donot intend to compose an epic about him or to describe a distinguished youngman, but simply my boy’.53 In other words, he claims that he is providing anhonest assessment of his son’s failings, rather than conforming to the tradi-tional expectations associated with the letter of recommendation.

Certainly, his insistence on honesty was itself a rhetorical pose, but it doesgive a particular quality to the request with which Petrarch ends his letter toCavalchini:

What more shall I say? I entrust this man to you, whom, I hope, you will returnto me a better man, as Socrates promised Eschines. So that you may proceedmore willingly I shall say to you what Philip said to Aristotle: I indeed rejoice thathe was born in your times, since you can make something of him if any mancan. Nor do I conceal from you that, in my concern for him and in carefully

51 Fam 19.4 (Sec.2, ll.8–14): ‘Hic vir, o maxime Cesar, qui ad pedes tuos cum literis meis venit, romanus estcivis et sanguine nobilis et virtute nobilior; cuius in laudibus multus essem – nam copiosa et larga materia estde prudentia de fide de industria de facundia de circumspectione multiplici ceterisque virtutibus hominis huiusloqui –, nisi quia totum tibi, sapientissime principum, atque extimationi tue committendum credidi.’

52 Fam 13.2 (Sec.2, ll.14–16): ‘hominem nullum vidi magis a literis abhorentem; neminem odit aut metuitpreter librum, illum unicum hostem habet.’

53 Fam 13.2 (Sec.3, ll.71–19): ‘neque enim heroycum carmen in manibus est, non egregium adolescentemdescribere est animus, sed nostrum.’


considering all possibilities, I could have done otherwise, yet I preferred that hestay in Verona, believing nothing more desirable than you and your virtues.54

Comparing Cavalchini to both Socrates and Aristotle as an educator may be alittle hyperbolic; given the extent to which Petrarch has emphasized thelimitations of his son, one might even wonder whether these allusions weretongue-in-cheek. Even so, his willingness to point out the failings of the personhe was recommending was not restricted to his son. In his recommendationsof Malpaghini addressed to Francesco Bruni and Ugo di Sanseverino, heoutlines both his good qualities and his failings.55

In relation to both individuals whom he recommended, one can see someof the tensions that Petrarch had to address in writing these letters. It was tobe expected that such a letter would portray the recommended person in afavourable light. Writing to Sanseverino, Petrarch comments that Malpaghinihad specifically requested the letter of recommendation in the belief that thiswould carry weight with its recipient. At the same time, though, Petrarchwanted to demonstrate that he approached his correspondents with honesty.There may also have been a concern that he would devalue the currency if heexaggerated the strengths of the people on whose behalf he wrote. All of thiswas a particular issue for Petrarch because he did not conceive of himself aswriting standard letters of recommendation associated with patronage net-works; rather his were letters exchanged with friends.

Indeed, friendship is probably the most important concept running throughPetrarch’s letters of recommendation.56 Of course, this was, in a sense, to beexpected. The very nature of the activity, and the model set out above, certainlyimplies friendship, a theme in letters of the period that has received consider-able recent attention.57 In addition, the importance of friendship to Petrarchhas often been noted.58 But a close investigation of these letters allows one todiscern quite how central a role it played. In the first place, the individualsinvolved in the process are themselves frequently identified as Petrarch’sfriends. This occurs in the titles of the letters: in five of the thirteen letters of

54 Fam 13.2 (Sec.7, ll.47–55): ‘Quid ulterius dicam? dono hunc hominem tibi, quem meliorem michirestitues, ut spero, quod Socrates promisit Eschini. Id ut libentius prestes, dicam quod Philippus Aristotili:Gaudeo equidem et ego hunc tua etate natum esse, qui per te aliquid fiat, si per hominem fieri potest; necdissimulo me, dum sibi anxius invigilo cuntaque circumspicio, nil magis quam te tuasque virtutes intuentem,cum alia possem, veronense illi habitaculum elegisse.’

55 Sen 11.8, 11.9.56 On the role of friendship in medieval letter collections, see for instance Julian Haseldine, ‘Understanding

the language of amicitia. The friendship circle of Peter of Celle (c. 1115–1183)’, Journal of Medieval History 20(1994), 237–60; Walter Ysebaert, ‘Medieval Letter-Collections as a Mirror of Circles of Friendship? The Exampleof Stephen of Tournai, 1128–1203’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 83, 2 (2005), 285–300.

57 E.g. Judith Bryce, ‘Between Friends? Two Letters of Ippolita Sforza to Lorenzo de’ Medici’, RenaissanceStudies 21 (2007), 340–65; Amyrose McCue Gill. ‘Fraught Relations in the Letters of Laura Cereta: Marriage,Friendship and Humanist Epistolarity’, Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009), 1098–1129; Yvonne Charlier, Erasme etl’amitié d’après sa correspondance (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1977).

58 Dolora Chapelle Wojciehowski, ‘Francis Petrarch: First Modern Friend’, Texas Studies in Literature andLanguage 47 (2005), 269–98.

12 Kenneth Austin

recommendation, the beneficiary is described as a ‘friend’59 while two othersare described as being ‘about the same subject’ when that subject has just beenidentified as relating to a friend;60 to this list might be added a letter describedas a ‘recommendation of his Lelius (‘commendatio Lelii sui’).61

However, it is when one looks at the ideas advanced in these letters that onetruly gets a sense of how Petrarch made use of the language, and expectations,associated with friendship. In the first place, he frequently made allusions tothe obligations of hospitality which friendship incurred. While obligationsarising from religious duty, patriotism, and doing what is right tended, as wehave seen, to be dealt with head-on, confronting a correspondent with thedemands of friendship was evidently a more delicate matter. This was the case,for instance, with Petrarch’s letter to the Bishop of Olmütz, recommendingSagremor, in which he writes: ‘It would be fitting and worthy of you, then,were you to reciprocate his love by proving that, just as no one can surpass youin intelligence or eloquence or virtue, no one can outdo you in kindness andlove.’62 With these words, Petrarch combines flattery with a notion of mutualobligation: the bishop should aid Sagremor in order to reciprocate the lovethat Sagremor has shown to him.

But these obligations could be hinted at in still more subtle ways. In theletter preceding this one in the collection, addressed to Bartolommeo daGenova, a student at the University of Bologna, Petrarch spoke of his bur-geoning friendship with Bartolommeo and closed with a reference to hisreadiness to offer assistance: ‘If you ever have need of anyone, then use me asyou will, and consider me confidently among your friends.’63 Obviously, thebishop would not have read this letter, but the pairing was undoubtedly notaccidental; although addressed to another figure, it highlights for the readerthe culture of mutual obligation. An even clearer example of this was the letterthat Petrarch wrote to Bernardo Anguissola, on behalf of the German crossingthe Alps;64 in the previous letter, to the same addressee, Petrarch had empha-zised how keen he was to visit his great friend Anguissola. In a sense, this laidthe foundation for the request that came in the next letter. In this regard, itis remarkable that with the exception of two correspondents (to whom he onlysent one letter each) all the recipients of a letter of recommendation hadreceived a previous letter from Petrarch; in other words, for each of them, thatletter was part of an ongoing exchange of favours.

Another strategy that Petrarch adopted in this respect was to identify himselfclosely with the person whom he was recommending. In one letter, he urges

59 Fam 17.7, 19.6, 21.5, 23.3, 23.7.60 Fam 21.6, 21.7.61 Fam 19.4.62 Fam 21.5 (Sec.4, ll.21–24): ‘Rite ergo teque rem dignam feceris si eum reciproca caritate complexus,

ostenderis te ut ingenio ut eloquio ut virtute animi, sic benivolentia et amore a nemine vinci posse.’63 Fam 21.4 (Sec.4, ll.27–28): ‘Proinde me, siquis est usus, iure tuo utere, inque amicis certa fidutia habeto.’64 Fam 17.7. This letter is discussed more fully in the next section.


Francesco Nelli to ‘look upon him as you would me’;65 this idea is echoed in theletter which follows it in the collection, again to Nelli, where Petrarch indicatesthat he has heard from the pilgrim that he was well received: ‘Through it I haveperceived what I once learned through experience: the way you would receiveme, judging from your reception of my friend on his way to Rome. . . .’66 A stillmore striking example comes from the letter to the Emperor on behalf ofLelius, in which he notes: ‘although to speak truthfully and properly, it is notanother whom my devotion now recommends to you, but another me, as theysay.’67 In this last expression, Petrarch taps into a classic concept from dis-courses on friendship, namely the friend as another self.68

In this letter to the emperor, Petrarch exemplifies a final strand that furtherillustrates the extent to which friendship helped shape his thinking, and had animpact on the letters of recommendation which he wrote: this was the explicitreference to the notion of friendship itself. Of course, the very fact that Petrarchhas named his friend Lelius was an allusion to Cicero’s De amicitia.69 But towardsthe end of his letter, Petrarch spells it out: ‘His name is Lelius, who among theancients, according to Cicero, was a wise man distinguished for his faithfulnessand friendship; among us he has acquired a reputation in both areas. Theancient Laelius had Scipio as a friend: I am not Scipio, but I am his friend, andas a suppliant I intercede with my lord in my friend’s behalf.’70 By taking on therole of Scipio (though claiming to distance himself from him), and placing therequest full square in the context of amicitia, Petrarch demonstrates how heconsiders his request should be read by its recipient; again, it is apparent that hebelieves the evocation of the language of friendship should be sufficient topersuade the Emperor to acquiesce.

***

In this final section, I will consider the ways in which Petrarch’s placement ofhis letters of recommendation within the published collections influencedtheir form. This will shed light both on certain elements of Petrarch’s con-struction of these texts, and also make it possible to suggest how these lettersmight have been read. As has already been noted, he is known to have devotedconsiderable attention to the construction of his letter collections, and thiscase study can help to reveal elements of his method.

65 Fam 19.6 (Sec.1., l.7): ‘Sic eum aspicies ut me.’66 Fam 19.7 (Sec.4, ll.26–27): ‘Sensi ex ea, quod olim didiceram expertus, qualiter me visurus sis, qui

romipetam meum ita videris.’67 Fam 19.4 (Sec.1, ll.5–7): ‘quanquam si vere et proprie loqui velim, non sit alter quem mea tibi nunc devotio

recommendat, nisi forsan ut dici solet alter ego.’68 E.g. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, trans J. A. K. Thomson (London: Penguin, 1955, 2004) IX, 9 (at 246).69 Cicero, Laelius: On Friendship [De Amicitia] in Cicero, On the Good Life, trans. Michael Grant (London:

Penguin, 1971), 172–227.70 Fam 19.4.

14 Kenneth Austin

An obvious first point is that the letters frequently appear as pairs, and onone occasion as a triplet. In fact, this is true of all but two of his thirteen lettersof recommendation.71 On three occasions, the letters are adjacent and refer tothe same individual. Two other pairs of recommendation letters are separatedby only one or two letters; a reader working through the book in sequencewould undoubtedly be aware of the parallels.72 Admittedly, one might contendthat this was a product of the circumstances in which the letters were written:letters of recommendation for the same individual would, reasonably, bewritten at the same time (and indeed, sometimes the letters of recommenda-tion share the same date). Against this, however, one has to recall that whilePetrarch’s letters are arranged in broadly chronological order, this order isvery frequently disrupted; consequently, one must assume such disruption isfar from arbitrary.73 This arrangement allowed Petrarch to do still more withhis letters of recommendation.

In the first place, producing letters in pairs allows a sense of complemen-tarity to emerge. Probably the clearest example of this is provided by the twoletters that Petrarch wrote on behalf of his son: a sense of balance is impliedfrom the outset. The letters are entitled: ‘To Rinaldo da Verona, poet, arecommendation for the young man sent to him for educating’ and ‘ToGuglielmo da Verona, orator, on the same subject’.74 The names by which hiscorrespondents are addressed, and their professional occupations, enhancethe sense of connection and balance. This impression is then supported by thecontent of the two letters: while Rinaldo is asked to be responsible for theeducation of Petrarch’s son, Guglielmo is to oversee his behaviour.

However, the sense of balance is perhaps undermined by the respectivelengths of the two letters. The second letter is only about one quarter as longas the first. It is certainly possible that Petrarch anticipated that the twoVeronese recipients of his requests would share his letters between themselves,but it seems significantly more likely that it was their placement within thecollection of letters which was the more influential factor (it is highly likelythat the second letter of the pair was substantially rewritten when Petrarchdecided to include it in his published collection). For readers of the volume,there was no need to provide the broader picture for the second letter, sincethe scene had been set by the first; indeed, to have done so might have beento introduce a degree of repetition. This meant that literary concerns werepursued at the expense of due politeness.

71 The exception is Fam 17.7.72 Fam 19.4 and 19.6; Fam 23.3 and 23.7.73 Cf. Mary Beard, ‘Ciceronian Correspondences: Making a Book Out of Letters’ in T. P. Wiseman (ed.),

Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 103–44 in whichBeard argues that the decision to publish editions of Cicero’s letters arranged in chronological order under-mines the literary dimensions of the collections.

74 Fam 13.2, 13.3: ‘Ad Rainaldum Veronensem poetam, commendatio adolescentis discendi gratia ad se missi’and ‘Ad Guillelmum Veronensem oratorem, de hoc ipso’.


The recommendation for a friend crossing the Alps, addressed to BernardoAnguissola, stands alone, but even here it is apparent that reading the letter aspart of the published collection adds a further dimension. In this letter, as wesaw, Petrarch asked for the favour on various grounds, including the student’sdevotion to his family and to the land of his birth. Arguably the strongestfactor, however, was likely to be the relationship between Petrarch and Anguis-sola. The significance of this is highlighted by the fact that the preceding letterwas also addressed to Anguissola, and that in it, he emphasizes their closeness,expressing his desire to visit him: ‘But much more readily would I see a friendsuch as yourself, for I firmly believe that nothing gives greater pleasure to myeyes than to behold the face of a much-desired friend.’75

By stressing their friendship in this letter, Petrarch provides a context forthe one containing his request and therefore he makes it more likely thatAnguissola will accede to it. At the same time, the manner in which heachieves this is quite subtle: by spreading it over two letters, there is less a senseof his request being a demand for a directly reciprocal action; instead it isplaced in a broader context of mutual support. The sense of connectionbetween the two letters is further strengthened by their content. In the pre-ceding letter, Petrarch anticipates travelling to see Anguissola, but at the lastminute changes his mind, fearful about crossing the Alps in the dead ofwinter. Significantly, this is the very same journey that the friend whom herecommends is about to undertake.

In still other letters, the presentation helps draw the reader into a mini-narrative; taken together, the letters reflect a vignette. This is true, forinstance, of the letters relating to the recommendation of Lelius. Before theletter written to the emperor on Lelius’ behalf, there is one to Lelius himself.Not only does this allow him to express their closeness (‘I speak with you as Iwould with myself’),76 to make connections with Lelius’ namesake, and tooffer thoughts on the nature of friendship (‘great is the faithfulness of friend-ship’),77 all of which themes are echoed in the letter of recommendation, buthe also uses it to introduce the one which follows: ‘Along with this letter youwill receive the letter that you wished from me to Caesar about you so that youcould approach him with greater confidence and familiarity . . . I hope thatit . . . will open Caesar’s doors to you.’78

Ending the letter in this way might almost constitute a cliffhanger. Theletter that follows is the recommendation itself. It is not until eight letters laterin the collection, when Petrarch wrote again to the emperor, that we learn

75 Fam 17.6 (Sec.1, ll.9–11): ‘Talem vero amicum multo cupidius; aut enim ego fallor aut nulla dulcedo maioroculis quam exoptata facies amici.’

76 Fam 19.3: ‘ita tecum loquerer ut mecum.’77 Fam 19.3: ‘magna fides amicitie.’78 Fam 19.3: ‘Epystolam quam ad Cesarem ipsum tuis me de rebus scribere voluisti, qua comitatus illum

fidentius atque familiarius adeas, cum hac simul accipies . . . Illa quidem, ut spero . . . cesareum tibi limenaperiet.’

16 Kenneth Austin

that the original recommendation had been a success.79 A similar impressionemerges from the pair of letters sent by Petrarch to Francesco Nelli: the firstconveys the recommendation, while the second expresses gratitude foracting upon that recommendation.80 When authors composed letter-writingmanuals, particularly in the vernacular, they would often weave storiesthrough a sequence of model letters, so that their text was entertaining as wellas useful.81 It seems highly likely that a similar intention contributed toPetrarch’s presentation of the letters of recommendation within his publishedcollections. While they were originally intended to serve a specific purpose,this was not of particular concern to the wider readership of Petrarch’s letters;handling them in this way allowed him to inject additional interest into suchexchanges.

***

Petrarch only included a handful of letters of recommendation in his pub-lished collections. In certain respects, they typify the genre more widely;indeed, their purpose makes certain elements unavoidable. They are writtenfor people close to him, including his son and one of his closest friends; theyare addressed to other figures, often those who wield considerable power andstatus, but again who are generally bound to Petrarch in some way; and ofcourse, Petrarch asks the latter for a favour on behalf of the former. And, aswe saw particularly in relation to two of the letters to the emperor, he couldconform to the traditional model when the circumstances required it.

But on other occasions, he proved himself able to rise above the essentiallymundane purpose of the letters of recommendation. Needless to say, a con-siderable part of this was encouraged by the fact that he was consciouslywriting ‘familiar’ letters, which should be characterized by originality andpersonal qualities. In the letters considered here, we have seen that this wassometimes achieved by humour, sometimes by confounding the expectationsof his recipient, and sometimes by broader philosophical reflections. Hisletters were also very much tailored to the particular situation. The status ofthe recipient was not without significance, but more important was the rela-tionship that Petrarch enjoyed with him, and what he knew of his correspon-dent’s concerns. In seeking to make the recipients of his letters act uponhis recommendation, he frequently made use of one or both factors tosupport his request. The hospitality and favours requested in the letters ofrecommendation were repeatedly presented as part and parcel of the reci-procity associated with friendship; in the language of his letters, Petrarchhelped to strengthen that association. It was also this discourse of friendship

79 Fam 19.12 (Sec.7, ll.47–48): ‘Salutem michi Lelius meus tuis verbis attulit.’80 Fam 19.6, 19.7.81 Katherine Gee Hornbeak, ‘The Complete Letter Writer in English, 1568–1800’, Smith College Studies in

Modern Languages 15, 3–4 (1934), 1–150.


that helped him to overcome the potential tension between the essentiallyformulaic nature of the letter of recommendation, and the spontaneity of thestyle of letter-writing which he favoured.

Gathering the letters together for publication added a further dimension toPetrarch’s epistolarity. By often placing the letters of recommendation inclose proximity to each other, he was able to demonstrate his versatility,offering different versions of essentially the same letter. In addition, such setsof letters could be used to build up a more layered impression of a givenrelationship. As we have also seen, the letters of recommendation are some-times further explicated by the letters that surround them, and takentogether, can even constitute narrative episodes. Reading them in that setting,moreover, demonstrates some of the ways in which friendship and patronagewere woven together through his correspondence. For many individuals in theRenaissance, the letter of recommendation was a practical and ultimatelyformulaic mode of exchange; for Petrarch, by contrast, it was yet anotherarena in which he could show off his skills as a letter writer.

University of Bristol

APPENDIX

Letters of Recommendation

Ad Fam 13.2 To Rinaldo da Verona, poet, a recommendation for the young man sentto him for educating.

Ad Fam 13.3 To Guglielmo da Verona, orator, on the same subject.Ad Fam 17.7 [To Bernardo Anguissola, Governor of Como]*, a recommendation for

a friend crossing the Alps.Ad Fam 19.4 To Charles IV, a recommendation for his Lelius.Ad Fam 19.6 To Francesco of the Church of the Holy Apostles, a recommendation

for a friend going to Rome.Ad Fam 21.5 To Jan, Bishop of Olmütz, a recommendation for a common friend.Ad Fam 21.6 To Ernst, Archbishop of Prague, concerning the same matter.Ad Fam 21.7 To the Emperor Charles, a recommendation for the same person so

deserving of him and of the empire.Ad Fam 22.11 To Gugliemo da Verona, a recommendation for a friend who had late

but passionately turned to intellectual pursuits.Ad Fam 23.3 [To our present Caesar]*, a rather urgent recommendation for a friend.Ad Fam 23.7 [To Jan, Bishop of Olmütz, Chancellor of the Imperial Court]* a

recommendation for a friendSen 11.8 To Francesco Bruni, a recommendation of a young studentSen 11.9 To Ugo di Sanseverino, a recommendation for the same person

*The recipient is identified in the previous letter; these letters are, in their titles,addressed ‘to the same correspondent’.

18 Kenneth Austin

Abstract

kenneth austin, Petrarch’s letters of recommendation

This article uses the letters of recommendation that Petrarch included in his publishedcollections of letters as a case study to illuminate several aspects of Renaissance epis-tolarity. It considers the relationships between Petrarch, the people he was recom-mending, and the recipients of his letters, and analyses the rhetorical strategies that headopted in them. In particular, it highlights the significance of friendship as providingboth a context for, and a justification of, the requests these letters contained. Morebroadly, it examines how Petrarch sought to resolve the apparent contradictionbetween the supposedly spontaneous nature of the ‘familiar’ letter and the rathermore formulaic character associated with a letter intended for a specific purpose. Inaddition, these letters are considered as elements within ‘constructed’ texts in order toshed light on the relationship between published letter collections and letter-writingmanuals. These two genres have tended to be treated separately, but it is clear that theyoverlapped in a number of ways.

Keywords: friendship; letters; Petrarch

petrarch's letters of recommendation

Documents